Christianity and the Problem of Human Violence: Part 83: Faith and the Bible

Christian tradition includes the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creek,
which are statements of faith. Both were written in the fourth century after
there was an organized structure to the Church, which needed to refute
heresies. Earlier, faith was solely a matter of experience. The Disciples,
who had earlier abandoned Jesus, had an experience at the Pentecost that
inspired them to spread the Gospel. The first Christians heard stories about
Jesus, and the experience changed their lives. In today’s world, experiences
continue to be an important part of Christian faith, because it is only by
our senses that we can receive the revelation of God that transforms us.
Indeed, we have received the same stories as the first Christians, and these
have the potential to similarly transform our lives. Belief that God has
worked through Jesus Christ and that God continues to work through the Holy
Spirit means that we profess a faith in divine action within the world, the
same divine action revealed in the Bible’s stories.

There are people, however, who find the Bible not an inspiration but
rather a stumbling block to faith. For example, many conclude that there are
numerous inconsistencies and contradictions, and there are stories (e.g.,
the creation account) that seem to contradict scientific discoveries. For
these people, believing in the Bible is tantamount to believing in
impossible things. In addition, they are confused by the notion that the
Bible is the “word of God,” because words have different meanings to
different people and at different points in time. Even if God did “write”
the Bible, they posit, the task of discerning God’s mind strikes them as
insurmountable. Finally, many readers are troubled by stories that seem to
describe God favoring war, mass slaughter, and mistreatment of women,
slaves, and animals.

I think that, despite these challenges for some people, the belief that
God works within history, a belief that appears to be universal among
Christians, can make it possible for them to believe that God’s work did
inspire the Bible. On this basis they may regard the Bible as the literal
word of God. Then, passages which seem inconsistent with a loving God, taken
in the larger context of God's plan made before the beginning of the world
for Creation, can be better understood. For example, passages that seem to
denigrate women or other people, or that picture violence and
destructiveness, can be received as part of the Bible's gradual revelation
that “God is light and in him is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5)
Therefore, I don’t think the Bible has to be a stumbling block to Christian
faith.

One does not need to believe that the Bible’s stories are literally true
in order to believe that they are true. Many who doubt the literal truth of
the Bible still find its stories profoundly revealing, in the same way that
a fictional story can describe important and valid aspects of human
experience through fabricated people and events. I think the Bible offers
God's truth about human psychology, anthropology, and community; I think
those who doubt the Bible’s literal truth can reasonably conclude that the
Bible informs us about the will of God. Though, as is often the case, those
who hold the Bible as the inerrant word of God and those who receive the
Bible as true but not literally true have trouble communicating with each
other, this difficulty is not insurmountable. If we focus on Christ as
purely loving and forgiving, all Christians, striving to live in love like
Christ, have a common ground for living together in a faith community.

Mimetic theory and the scapegoating mechanism, which have been a focus of
this series, tell us that humankind has always created communities by the
clearly unloving scapegoating of innocent victims. The Bible, however, is
profoundly insightful in its stories about community. It teaches us how to
generate community, not through violence, but through love. This, I think,
defines Christian faith: belief in the power of love, compassion and
forgiveness to create community. This is indeed the very experience of the
risen Christ! Christ was the last victim and intends that there be no more
victims. He died and rose to unite all creation in himself. (Ephesians
1:9-10)

A good example of Christian scapegoating is the Church's sad history of
animal mistreatment. The Christian community has generally interpreted
certain passages, such as the dominion over creation granted by God to Adam
in Genesis 1, as justifying humankind’s exploitation and abuse of animals.
Such an interpretation denies the experience of the risen Christ who gave
his life in love for all creation. (Colossians 1:20) Certainly when we
believe in the statements of our historic creeds and in the Bible’s
historical inerrancy we mean to affirm the experiences of Jesus Christ, both
on earth and after the Resurrection. Yet these approaches to faith for most
Christian individuals and for the Church has been a kind of rote reciting of
creeds and Bible verses which has kept us from the Bible's deeper truth
about victimization. Any one of our faith practices which has potential to
blind us to the reality of victimization, human or animal, also has the
potential to deny the risen Christ's experience. All expressions of our
faith must be combined with copious prayers for insight into the kind of
community God is bringing into being and our part in bringing it.

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